


Everything to Bid, Everything to Lose

by Amand_r



Category: Highlander: The Series
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-07
Updated: 2014-01-07
Packaged: 2018-01-07 19:25:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1123493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amand_r/pseuds/Amand_r
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Methos was less concerned about the morality of the Watchers owning these artefacts and more about his schadenfreude at what he thought was a fruitless pursuit; he delighted in telling Joe that his interest in the Watchers was self-preservation, and nothing else. But this time, it was a little different—he had something that Methos had created, once owned, and based on his response at the auction, was very interested in getting back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everything to Bid, Everything to Lose

**Author's Note:**

  * For [keerawa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/keerawa/gifts).



> You asked for a scenario in which the Watchers got something wrong in Methos' chronicle and he wants it corrected, but it occurred to me more that Methos would care less about his record, spotty as it was, and more that the Watchers might have certain documentation that he might prefer to possess himself. And so. Also, my knowledge of history is shoddy, supplanted with only descriptions from Anne Rice vampire novels. Sry.

Vincent, will you teach me how to paint  
Teresa, will I ever be a saint  
John I really think your songs are great,  
I was born too late. ('Born Too Late', The Clarks)

 

**Venice, 1459**

Margherita was a ghost that evening, and he almost thought he’d never see her alone. Methos made his way through the flounces of silk and linen, damask and velvet, waterfalls of ribbon and lace and light tinkling noises that could have been women's laughter or wine glasses. 

It was a bright party, actually. Bright and full of noises and smells, not all of them pleasant. The perfumes disguising general malodors were almost as bad as the things they meant to cover, and Methos pondered the fact that he'd been alive for centuries in such a human state, but never managed to ignore the assault to his senses. He snagged another wine glass and drank deeply. If he drank enough, he wouldn't notice the smell anymore.

He'd been in Venice for about three weeks, not bothering to establish a residence of his own, but instead depending on the kindness of scholarly and artistic patrons, but soon he would have to decide if he was going to settle down here or move on to the north, where other civilization and stimulation was to be found. Certainly France was in the middle of some interesting things, and if he was so inclined, he could venture farther to Britain, where the wine was bad but the hunting was good.

His current hunt, and its failure, was not a good sign for future activities. Margherita had dashed by him earlier, and he had barely time to catch her sleeve before it slipped from his fingertips and her whole body almost vanished again. He heard her laugh up in the gallery of the house, then down further closer to the servants' exit. He thought he saw her out by the front door, stepping into a boat, but then he turned away, trying to flag down his cloak, when he heard her singing something in another room on the first floor. The Murano partitions cut the huge space into sections, and they were impossible to see through. 

He had only seen her a few times, and she was no one of import, as mysterious and indescribable as many of Venice's denizens of luxury. He had thought her a courtesan, but inquiries had been met with a few chuckles and shakes of the head. One man, Roderigo something-or-other had told him that Margherita was an odd duck, if you were 'up for that sort of thing', whatever that meant. Methos had said three words to her so far: Hello, your, and skirts. His heart had memorized all of them for future reference should he have to converse with her again, and if he had his way, he would be very soon.

If he could only catch her.

The party was one of those loud raucous things that were always a miracle in the face of the fact that it was everything the Pope frowned upon. But here they were, on the stinking water, drinking, and fucking and saying things that might get them burned fifteen times over, and no one seemed to care that there was a church full of sour faced priests across the canal. No wait, he realized as he bumped into one as he passed through the pain hall, that one there was anything but sour faced. A little in his cups, yes, and with a woman plastered to his arm.

All right, then.

He was thinking of doing another turn through the upper gallery when he heard her again, and then, there, in a glass painting of a vivid yellow sun--Methos watched as Margherita turned her head to look at someone, her whole face framed and shining in the very hollow center, her yellow curled hair trembling when she laughed, her perfect face round and radiant. And then she looked through the glass and seemed to see him, for she smiled widely, her eyes only for him.

It was a sign. 

#

"Did you know that I once owned the L’Arc de Triomphe?" Methos said idly, his hands stuffed in his pockets, eyes happily darting about as he took in all the people hurrying about. "Well, the land it’s on," he admitted.

"Shut. Up," Joe said, wondering when he’d picked up that bit of slang. Probably from one of the new Watchers he was training—most of them weren’t even legal to drink in the States.

"Well, it was a very long time ago, and I only had the deed for about a week," Methos added, gaze dragging so slowly along a window display of lingerie that his steps went into slow motion, and Joe had to almost stop himself. "Lost it playing cards to someone. De…de Something, Duke of Something or other."

Joe didn't pursue the conversation. He had been informed that these conversations were called 'clickbait' on the internet (aka the 'interwebs', he had also learned recently). So it was pointless to go any further, unless he wanted to commit himself to a conversation that was basically an exercise in taking the mickey out on him. 

"So, what does this say about your gambling skill?" Joe mused. "Only a week."

Methos waved a hand in dismissal. "Nonsense. The man was shot a week later. Caught hiding cards and died in a duel." They turned down another street and he looked around. "Where are we going again?"

Joe laughed. "I didn't say. Why are you here?"

"I was just walking with you."

Joe batted a can out of his way with his stick. The streets were getting messier. Or maybe Paris sanitation was on strike again. It was hard to tell sometimes. He mused that if he still had to worry about the bar and its trash pick-up, he most likely would have known, but as it was, he'd sold the bar and now spent his days laying down track for an album, working when he felt like it, constantly bitching about how the whole recording process was so slow it was not unlike watching two snails fucking.

"I'm going to an auction," he said. "Load of artefacts from some private collections, you know." He stopped for a cat that wasn't sure if it wanted to sit on the stoop or twine about his legs and kill him. "I still have a job to do."

Methos almost skipped. He could have been avoiding trash, but Joe preferred to think that Methos was so chipper at the mention of an auction that he couldn't contain his joy. 

Because it was true. Methos was screamingly funny at auctions. Sometimes he amused himself by inventing false provenances for items in lecture format, talking people into over-bidding on a worthless item, and then skipping out before the lies were discovered. Other times he loudly trashed something so that he could bid on it in relative peace and win it at a lower price. In other cases, Joe had seen him nudge people's placards up without their knowledge, or in general just offer scathing and X-rated commentary from his seat, or in one case, heckle the auctioneer so badly that he had been asked to leave. He'd refused, politely, and then was no longer asked, but forcibly removed. 

Methos called it 'performance art'.

The building, owned by the Schultzhein Bros, Estate auctioneers, was a bottom barrel house for individuals whose items had less than stellar historical documents to prove that they hadn't been stolen/permanently borrowed/claimed/were actually nor forgeries. 

"Well, then," Methos said as he opened the door of Schultzhein Bros for Joe and waving him in, "it's most fortuitous that I'm here to provide a helping hand and all."

Joe whipped his scarf off his neck and stuffed it in his pocket. "Quite."

The room was bright and littered with pedestals covered in glass cases, displaying auction wares to be had that day so that they could be inspected, at least visually, before one bid on them. Joe took the booklet from the helpful woman at the entrance and also shoved that in his pocket. He didn't need it, not really. He had business here, and it was not to be bidding today. He might sit in on the auction with Methos just for the lolls, as his apprentice (aka 'padawan learner') might have said, but he today was a low-key day. 

Methos broke away and wandered amongst the podiums, making faces, tapping the glass cases, shaking his head and in general tut-tutting, and then his eyes alit on an open leather bound journal, its pages yellowed with age. Joe hoped that the case was climate controlled, the paper looked so old, but Schultzhein was not known for its attention to detail like that, so he doubted it. Better that the book was bought sooner rather than later, and treated with better care than it was currently.

"Hey," Methos said, smacking the pedestal lightly with the side of his catalogue booklet. "This is my journal," Methos said, incredulous. "I thought I lost it in the flooding."

"What flooding?" Joe said, joining him at the glass case and glancing at the ticket number at the bottom. Oh. He shouldn't have been surprised, actually.

Neither should have Methos. That Joe was even going to an auction meant only one thing, because frankly, Joe didn't have the money to buy this kind of shit. Or the interest. It was obvious from a cursory glance about the room that there were no vintage vinyl albums or guitars here, so Methos had to know by now that he was there on business, and that that business meant--

Methos craned his head around, as if he was trying to peek at the flattened pages on either side of the open book to see if he could read anything else. 

"Take your pick. Italy. Sometime." Joe watched him close his eyes, and knew that Methos was running his Search program for information. Sometimes it took a few minutes. Other times it was instant. One time Methos didn't say anything until three hours later, out of the blue, as if he had just left the program running a search in the back of his mind like an antivirus program on a computer. It had to be like that sometimes, Joe guessed. 

"It's got illustrations and everything." He pressed his fingers to the glass again, completely ignorant of the glares he was getting from the security guard across the room. "Margherita Francesca d'Vittini. He smiled, and Joe wondered if he was going to get a bawdy story. "She was my sixty-second wife. Tiny tits. Huge smile." 

"I don't know how you keep them straight," Joe said with a headshake.

"Well, you always remember the most recent ones," Methos told him, tracing a shape over the glass. "And if you had ever been married, Joe you would know that god help you, there are certain things you better remember or there will be hell to pay."

"You've only been married five times since…" He checked the card on the front of the case. "The Italian Renaissance?"

Methos shrugged again. "People live so much longer these days." He stopped again in front of the case, his hands clenching and unclenching. Something about this book being trapped here in this case was really bothering him. He glanced up to see Joe and seemed to realize that he was displaying something he'd rather keep concealed, because he smoothed over his expression and replaced it with something smarmy. "Plus, you know, the advent of cheap pornography."

He turned back to the case and continued. "I am so lucky I liquidated that account from Nice," he told Joe. "I'm going to bid the fuck out of this one. There's a drawing I did of her arse—"

"Adam," Joe began.

"Well, it was risqué for the day, I suppose, though not really. I mean, I was married to her, but—"

"Adam."

"What?" Methos turned from the case and glanced at Joe, then looked at another case next to it. "I should check all of these, because I'm missing about five volumes from that time—"

"Adam."

"What?" Methos turned around, his catalogue open in his hands. 

This was really gonna suck. Joe transferred his cane to his other hand and rubbed the back of his neck with his free fingers. He hadn't wanted to have this conversation.

"I'm not bidding," Joe said. He shifted so that an elderly couple could toddle past him, their eyes briefly cutting to the case Methos had been so engrossed in.

Methos shrugged. "No worries. I have an account here. If there's anything you want—" 

"Well, we bought it last night," Joe said, tapping the small card on the glass with one finger.

Methos swiveled away from another case that was displaying a chastity belt and made an emoticon face at Joe.

"I'm not here to bid," Joe confessed again. "Just to take receipt of a few crates. Georges is in front with the truck." And then, before he had to get into an argument whose contents would probably break their cover as a person who wasn't five thousand years old and companion who wasn't employed by an agency that spied on immortal people. "I'll ride in the cab with him," Joe added taking a step backwards. "But hey, if you see anything else you like, snag it and bring it by the bar, eh?"

Methos' expression left the land of ACSII finally and he cocked his head, eyes narrowed. "Wait, what?"

#

Margherita tied her scarf under her chin, trapping all her brilliant yellow hair away from prying eyes. Methos was sad to see it go, but it wasn't his hair, and she was nervous, had been nervous since they had made their way out of the city walls. 

"I did not mean to take you out of Venice," she said to him as they rode side by side in the wooden cart. Her belongings, trunks and trunks of clothes, dishes, items for a household were packed and stacked carefully in the cart bed, with a space in the middle for them to sleep if they had to stop. Methos preferred to be cradled protectively when he was travelling. And if anything wanted to slit their throats as they stopped by the side of the road, they would have to work pretty hard to get to them. Better that they make off with some of her trousseau than her blood.

He smiled at the ruts in the road, snapping the reins to straighten out the mules. "Nonsense."

"But really—"

Methos couldn't help that his smile widened at her objections. Margherita had been perfectly happy to live out their life together in Venice, unmarried in sin, and Methos probably would have obliged her, but for the response he had gotten from her father when he'd gone to ask for her hand. No, better to abscond with his blessing to another town than to stay and incur his wrath. 

And what a blessing! Boxes of silks and drapes and dishes. Methos had gotten married under worse conditions than this. 

"They would never let us marry there," Methos said. "Better to set up afresh in Florence. I have plenty of work to do there as well." And before she could say anything, "And probably plenty of work for you as well, if we play our cards right," he added. "I shan't be pleased to have you trapped in a household, mending clothing and polishing silverware."

Margherita smiled and pulled a leather-bound journal from the bag at her feet, along with a charcoal pencil. "And I expect that you'll be apologizing for me no matter where we go," she told him, flipping the book open and staring at him critically. We might be drummed out wherever we go."

"Well then, we'd better improve at packing," Methos replied with a head toss back at the cart piled high and tarped down with oilcloth and rough rope. 

She said nothing, but sighed and began to draw on a fresh page.

It had been a long chase for Methos. Used to charming his way with women who interested him and being vastly uninterested in the women who tried to charm him, he was unaccustomed to gifts and writing missives, of lingering outside the building where she was, trying to get her attention without gathering the attentions of the guard. 

As it turned out, the gifts had been passed to servants, and the missives had been perfunctorily read and discarded. Instead, it hadn't been until three months after the pursuit had begun, when she'd seen him working on a wall at the Doge's that she'd even remotely been interested in him.

From there things had blended into a whirlwind of wordless sketches and drawings sent back and forth, dropped out of windows in folded paper confections into his hands, delivered to her window by trained birds. Methos had long thought that he was immune to the elaborate and overly romantic methods of courting, but all it had taken to make it interesting was a worthy correspondent and a daily challenge of making his methods of transmission more and more avant garde.

The arrow had been a bad idea, though. No matter how well his aim, no one reacted well to an arrow landing on their casement.

Messages had become hushed conversations at shared parties, then private moments stolen down this alley and that, or in the servants' entrance to her father's house, and then finally, an evening out at a local friend's, a dinner thrown under duress and in pretense to bring them together. Embraces became more and more heated, and finally, when he had asked for her hand, had been consummated in the back room of a tavern that neither of them could afford to be seen in at all. 

But now, now that she was with him sunny and bright and just as gleaming as the day he'd first seen her, Methos sat in silence while she sketched his face, trying to examine his feelings at this moment. Would he come to regret his decision? What if he met someone in Florence whom he would rather not? He had heard that Venice had been deserted of his kind for a while, just a lull, no particular reason, and he had made sure that rumors of Methos had been spread to Padua, Paris and Antioch. Feeling relatively safe to pursue a gentle life for the meantime, Methos glanced at the woman beside him.

At that moment, Margherita turned her head away, 

When the sun began to fall, they made camp at the side of the road, pulling the cart over into the dry grass and selecting a place that had been used by travelers before, judging from the rock circle that had recently been used as a fire pit, if the ashes were anything to go by.

There, with the cart's canopy over them, trunks and crates forming a soundproofed fortress around them, Margherita reached into his trousers, and he threw his head back so hard he hit the sharp corner of a box and came up swearing. 

She fussed over him for a second until he waved her away, rearranging the blankets under them. Her chest was pressed to his and her dress slipped over her shoulders so that he could see her perfect neck more fully, her hair, now free of its kerchief, cascading down her back so that the ends peeked out from under her arms and at her waist. 

He lifted her skirts and explored up her inner thighs, his heart speeding up when she ground against his palm, and her lips sealed over his, and he could ignore the faint trickle of blood running down the back of his neck.

Three days later, they walked hand-in-hand from the little inn in Florence and down the street to the local church. Margherita's long hair streamed down her back like a bride, and Methos made his eyes tell every passerby that he belonged to her.

#

Joe hadn't seen Methos for three days since the auction house. He had left him there in the showroom, choosing to hide in the back room long after he'd filled out the paperwork, waiting for them to pack up the items and hand them over with the bill of lading. 

When he wanted to, Methos was quite good at the kind of historical superior Look that Mac gave him sometimes when he mentioned some artefact or other that the Watchers had in their possession. It was that Clan leader look that made Joe feel bad about doing his job. Methos was less concerned about the morality of the Watchers owning these artefacts and more about his schadenfreude at what he thought was a fruitless pursuit; he delighted in telling Joe that his interest in the Watchers was self-preservation, and nothing else. 

But this time, it was a little different—he had something that Methos had created, once owned, and based on his response at the auction, was very interested in getting back. But it was done. Joe had briefly considered 'disappearing' it from the inventory, but it had already been approved by the administration, and his friendship with Methos, while not universally well known, was well known to the people in charge, and they'd know exactly where it had gone. They were much less forgiving of Methos 'exploits' in their organization than Joe had been, and their view of historical property was flimsier, as well. 

Maybe he could get Methos a digital copy.

But he was almost relieved when Methos strolled into the bar on a Friday afternoon, shaking rain from his hair and slapping a slim briefcase onto the counter.

"Hey-o," Joe said, reaching for a glass.

"Just a half pint," Methos said cheerily. "I'm in transit. Came in for shelter. Well, sort of." He didn't take his coat off, but slid onto a stool and leaned on the shiny surface, watching water droplets drop from his hair onto the glass. 

"Umbrellas," Joe said, sliding the half-pint to Methos and not making a comment about how this was the first time he'd ever poured one for the man. "They invented them…well they invented them quite a long time ago."

Methos shrugged. "In my day, we used leaves and we liked it," he grumbled, a worn joke that he spouted for Joe, like when Joe's parents used to make him play the piano for dinner guests. 

The jukebox kicked on, some preprogrammed thing he couldn't turn off without unplugging it, and his new boss didn't like that. Joe didn't really think of Michel as his new boss really, but he did the books and he technically owned the building. It was probably how Methos felt about the L'Arc de Triomphe. 

_It's going down, I'm yelling timber, you better move, you better dance._

Indeed.

"What have you been up to?" he asked as Methos sipped his beer. 

Methos shrugged. "This. That. Paperwork."

"What paperwork do you have?" Joe scoffed. "Aside from fifteen-hundred-year-old recipes and old notes about a boxing match from the court of Hammurabi."

"That was a great match," Methos told him, not even bothering to do anything other than a cursory jest. "And I have lots of books, you know. And I have a job, such as it is."

Joe tried to look contrite, but it was hard. He'd seen Methos actually _working_ perhaps three or four times—usually deadlines for some online newsrag or some other. Sometimes he took in consulting work, but it was always with the understanding that he would get it done _when he got it done_. In fact, Methos probably spoke to his employers unlike any worker they had ever had before. His haggling and negotiating skills were unparalleled, and he had a firm idea of how and when actual "work" was supposed to happen (i.e. when he felt like it). It was probably completely antithetical to the way someone who was the actual age he looked to be would react, if the news reports were to be believed. Some poor girl had keeled over after a forty-hour work streak over in Taiwan the other day. The Japanese even had a word for it. 

Methos would know the word, but not the phenomenon. 

"Yeah, well—"

"The thing is," Methos said, sliding the beer towards himself and draining it, his eyes still not meeting Joe’s. "After that discussion we had the other day, I started thinking about all these old deeds and papers that I have just _lying about_." He opened the case and pulled out a manila folder, then tossed it on the counter before snapping his briefcase shut and turning on his heel to leave. "You can give that to your bosses," he said over his shoulder.

Joe dunked the glass in the water tub below and left it there. He wiped his hands on the towel and tossed it on the counter beside him, sliding the folder closer to him without looking at it. "What is it?"

Methos opened the door and peeked outside, up at the clouds, which had decided sometime in the last minute to stop pouring. "One of my many property deeds. To The Watchers' Paris location." He smiled. "Ah, all clear now." And then he was gone.

Joe flipped open the folder. "Wait, what?"

#

The room was brilliantly bright. Margherita had wanted light, she'd said, even though it hurt her eyes and she had to keep them shaded with a scarf, pulling it off her face every minute or so to reassure herself that the lights were still there. Her breathing was shallow and becoming more so by the hour. 

Methos sat next to her and held her hand, tracing the veins on the back of it with one finger. They were gorgeous hands, lined with age, her blood just under the surface, still moving, like fish under the frozen surface of a pond.

"You should have Sophia box up all the dresses and take them to the church," Margherita told him suddenly. "Dress me in a shift."

Methos smiled and picked up the sponge from the basin with his free hand, squeezing it out partly in his fist. When she refused it as he pressed it to her lips, he smiled, not even sure if she could even see his face anymore. He rested his hand on his thigh, letting the water run down and soak the knee of his breeches. 

"I've half a mind to dress you in the red silk," he said softly. 

Margherita lifted the scarf and glared in his direction, the little moue of her mouth lined with age. "You daren't."

It was the best response he'd gotten from her in a week. Methos knew that he was just waiting these days. He'd known, they'd both known, the last time they'd had to pack up and move to another town, the first time he'd actually referred to her as 'Mama' in public, that this was going to be the last time. 

Thirty years wasn't a bad investment of time, actually, Methos knew, thinking even as the phrase ran around in his head that he shouldn't have been regarding it in clinical assessment. He should have been full of pain, full of terrorizing grief, but yet, he wasn't. Watching her age, watching her decline, was the slowest balm of all, not unlike a frog in a pot of water that is slowly heated to boiling. 

The boiling heat never came for him, though, and when he held her hand in his, all he could think was that he had been—they had been—so very lucky. 

Her hair was no longer its brilliant gold, but then, it hadn't been for a long time. It was pale yellow, almost white, combed and fluffy on the pillow beside her. Her dressing gown was cream, hiding a multitude of stains that had incurred in the past few days. He had cleaned after her, lifting her from the pallet to wipe her down, to help her in her toilet, and years of medicine practice allowed him to shut off that emotional part of him that might have wept at the sight of her so dependent, so disarmed. 

He offered her the sponge again and she shook her head, wincing as if the very little movement had caused her pain. He looked towards the far bureau when one of the candles guttered and finally gave out, its wick falling over into a saucer full of melted wax. 

"Did you regret it?" Margherita whispered after he set the sponge down in its dish. "Do you regret that you couldn’t have children with me?"

He sat forward then, and watched her face, which was no longer looking at him, not really. The thought had never occurred to him, not truly, not any more than the look on her face was directed at him. And then her face slackened, just a little—it was strange how subtle death was when it came, for something so finite and defining—and her breathing trailed out in a low sigh that just ended with…ending.

"Never," he said to her eyes. "Never for a moment."

#

"Well, this should take care of everything," Methos said when he signed the forms to transfer the deed to WatsonChervan LTD. Joe leaned forward to see the illegible signature, not unfamiliar, and he wondered how often Methos worked to change his signature, and if there was, somewhere, a real signature to Methos, an instinctual one that belonged to only him. 

"I didn't mean to get all nasty about it," he finished, one final scribble with his pen. 

And boy, had he been nasty about it. Methos, whose deed had listed him in his traditional Benjamin Adams identity, had gone the full gamut of nuisances: cancelling utilities like water and power, filing demolition paperwork, threatening them with eviction, and opening the building for sale to several bidders, all keen to buy the place and turn it into condos or something. At the fifth or so visit from a prospective buyer, the Watchers had called Joe in desperation, or more like, irritation.

'For god's sake, just give him the fucking book,' Roger Patterson, bureau chief, had told him. 'We've scanned the whole thing. Tell him he can have it if he signs over the deed.'

Methos didn't seem to care that the Watchers knew where and who he was. They'd known for ages about Adam Pierson so, Joe supposed, Methos wasn't going to be too fussed if they knew he was still about. They had photo ID of him in the first place, which was about as specific as they could get. As far as Joe knew, they had Methos' fingerprints on file. 

"You should have asked for money," Joe mumbled when he folded the deed and slipped it into his breast pocket. It would be burning a hole in his chest until he offloaded it later. 

Methos shrugged. "Didn't seem sporting. Besides," he added. "They're going to need that money to replace their network." He smiled. "I might have had made some accusations about them being a child trafficking ring into the ear of Anonymous."

Joe whistled low. "That's a big risk," he said. "What if they find out about immortals?"

Methos sipped from his glass of whiskey. "No one _listens_ to Anonymous," he said with a headshake. "Attention span of ferrets. Remember when they boycotted Scientology?"

Joe was in the middle of opening his own briefcase and extracting the book. He felt like they were making some sort of clandestine mafia buy—briefcases, papers, ordered exchanges. "They did what?"

"Precisely."

Joe looked down at the book in the special cloth and reached into a bag for a pair of sterilized gloves. "Well, they cleaned it for you, as much as it can be cleaned," he began.

"Smashing," Methos said, pouring another finger of whiskey and downing it. 

"And I think they had a look at it, but they didn't remove anything, as far as I've been told," he said, glancing up. "Thing is, I did some research, and there was no Margherita Francesca d'Vittini," Joe said. "There was a _Marco Frederico_ d'Vitt... _oh_."

Methos looked away. "Yes, well."

"Was this him?" Joe asked, lifting the open book to show one of the book's illustrations, done with black ink and charcoal, faded and blurred but still very recognizable. Methos looked at Joe's white gloved hands before glancing at the illustration, only for a second, as if it blinded him.

"That's her," he said, sliding the papers across the table. "Now, my book, please. No need to bother with the cloth," he added when Joe closed the little book and set it down on the cloth. He held out a bare hand and clamped his hands on the spine when Joe offered it to him, his knuckles going white. "Thank you."

"The team said there was poetry in there," he drawled. "Is it yours or a copy?"

"You should know by now that I never crib," Methos. "And when I steal something, I just say so." His eyes were both warm and hard at the same time, like onyx just pulled from a fire pit.

Joe looked away. While any other day he might have told Methos to back the fuck off with his judgmental accusations, the truth was, he was holding a book that belonged to him, and which he had just had to trade an entire manor house to get it back from his best friend, who should have, the moment he'd learned it was Methos', done the right thing.

He'd thought about apologizing, but the thing he was apologizing for was so shitty that he didn't want to call attention to it. Methos was, in fact, shrugging his coat back on. He never seemed to stay these days, and wherever he was off to, Joe figured it was some hidey hole armed with pizza rolls and beer, he wished the man well. And that someday, Methos would emerge from that hole for more than twenty minutes and bring those pizza rolls over so they could share them.

Well, maybe not pizza rolls, _per se_. Metaphorical pizza rolls would suit Joe just fine. 

"I never figured you for a poem writing man, Methos," Joe said about three seconds before it occurred to him that what he meant to say was 'a poem writing man _now_ ', because in that split second, Joe realized that unlike Duncan, unlike Amanda, who he knew _now_ wasn't the man who'd penned that book. It might have been that Methos was just as interested in that man as Joe was. And he had even more reason to. 

"Poetry is not the measure of a man's soul or kindness, Joe, only that of his bravery and willingness to be a fool," Methos said, slapping the journal against his chest.

"Are you ever going to let me read it?" Joe asked as Methos turned towards the door.

Methos waved his empty hand in the air as he left. "Nope."

Joe watched the door shut with a faint slam, its heavy wooden bulk negated somewhat by the drafty wind outside. The little bell silenced with more of a clang than a tinkle, and the sun was cut off so that the room was bathed in incandescent again.

Well, he figured as he opened his laptop, it was a good thing he'd had a copy translated into a PDF.

_Oh love, wish not to live forever,_  
_For every creature must lie down into that rest_  
_Except for those, unmoored from death's tight tether_  
_Who wander, lost and soullessly bereft._

_And I, one of those monsters so afflicted,_  
_Released, yet trapped, and exiled to this place,_  
_Will bless these bonds that hold me thus restricted--_  
_Allowed to briefly look upon your face._

END


End file.
